Food for thought: safety and hygiene
Apex Food Consultants consultant and trainer Judy Sebastian gives us a breakdown about what businesses need to factor in when investing in a food truck. She says: “These are the ingredients to having a set-up for your food truck, because the real success is not dependent on how many products you’re able to sell per minute or per hour.
The real success is: are you able to deliver it in a safe manner? Because the worst thing that could happen to any business, regardless of it being mobile or a fixed unit, is food poisoning.”
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Understand the concept. Are you looking at fast food, are you looking at anything to do with dairy products like frozen yoghurt? You really need to understand your product to understand your risk.
Who are you going to cater to? When children enter the equation, then your risk analysis expands.
If you’re looking at large-scale events, you need to see if your truck will be able to keep up with that kind of flow. Do you have good waste management? Do you have a contingency plan in case one of your equipment fails? Is there a backup?
Approvals before everything else! You need to comply with the concerned municipality, depending on the emirate you’d be operating in.
Think about contamination: Most food trucks have mise en place happening in the central kitchen, so the central kitchen will also have to be pre-approved.
Also consider ingredients. If you’d like to promote gluten-free — it’s quite easy to bring gluten-free ingredients but it makes no sense if the kitchen that you’re operating in happens to have cross-contamination with products with gluten. Figure out the flow of your operation, which needs to be approved as well.
Educate staff members about ingredients and advertise these. People need to be aware of different allergens they should look out for. It’s a sense of accountability and responsibility. Staff should ask in advance: ‘is there something we should look out for in your food, so we can help to serve you better?’.
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May 6, 2015 , Canada
As a Company who has manufactured American Food Trucks for over 15 years we did see an increase in inquiries fro the UAE and especially Dubai over the 3+ years. Even at the very early days in America there were hurdles to jump over as with any new venture where city councils are not sure how to t...